Digital tools are helpful in increasing productivity
Technology is increasingly required to support strategy and culture in the modern connected enterprise
Telecommunications networks and particularly the internet, have changed people’s lives forever. Metcalfe’s Law explains why they have become so powerful: A network’s value increases exponentially with its size — the more people use it, the more their participation enhances it. This is generally a good thing, but not always. Metcalfe’s Law has a dark side when it affects workplace productivity. As the cost of initiating one-to-one and one-to-many interactions drops to zero, the number of interactions increases exponentially. By our estimates, a senior executive who in the 1970s might have received fewer than 1,000 outside phone calls, telexes or telegrams a year now faces a tidal wave of 30,000 e-mails and other electronic communications. Connected enterprises and automated scheduling have driven meeting time through the roof. At one company we analysed as part of an organisation-wide time-management study, employees spent a staggering 300,000 hours a year supporting a single weekly ...
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